


the magnificent end

by niqaeli



Series: thirty drops in a glass [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Bondage, Consent Issues, F/M, Insomnia, M/M, Other, Tifa is not any less terrifying or more sane than the Turks, incidental Rufus/Reno, is a very Turk way of dealing with intractable insomnia, kindness like knives, no even more background pairings than that, numerous other background pairings, tying someone to a bed and fucking them 'til they pass out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24031219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/pseuds/niqaeli
Summary: "He's not allowed out of that bed until after he sleeps at least six fucking hours, yo," Reno says. "Doesn't matter how the fuck you keep him there, long as he stays."Tifa glances over to Rufus, a quick assessing glance, no visible reaction. "Should I even ask why you haven't just drugged him?" she asks."All the sleep drugs, he goes full fucking manic," Reno says while he shrugs back into his own shirt and jacket. "Rest of the sedatives might as well be candy, and materia sleep you might as well not bother. Endorphins usually work, eventually."
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Rufus Shinra
Series: thirty drops in a glass [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733563
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	the magnificent end

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a post-script to the giant fucking post-ACC novel I'm writing wherein Sephiroth is rescued from Jenova, Aerith and Zack return, plot happens, as do a lot of relationships, and the eventual extended polycule of Rufus, Seph, Tseng, Reno, Rude, Tifa, Cloud, Aerith, and Zack ends up known as 'the clusterfuck'.
> 
> But I think it's fairly comprehensible without the novel, if you know that much. And, look, there's a pandemic on; I'm wallowing in my id to cope, I figure some of you might enjoy a wallow here too.

Rufus's hands are bound, the rope just rough enough for him to feel it when he twists against it, and throat-deep in Reno, who really does love to make extensive use of his minimal gag reflex; it's distracting enough he almost misses Tseng's glance at his wrist as the trigger that causes him to break his vigil sufficiently to pull out his phone and stare at it. But not quite.

"Reno," Tseng says, and _that's_ his working voice.

"The fuck you want, Boss, I'm busy," Reno snaps, cranky as he pulls away from Rufus's cock.

"Yes, I am _aware_ ," Tseng says. "Come here."

Rufus eyes the tense exchange thoughtfully as Tseng shows Reno his phone; it can't be a serious emergency or Tseng would have simply untied him from the start, but it's got to be something important or Tseng would never interrupt his own mandated 'medicine': "You need to _sleep_ ," Tseng had said, several hours earlier, as he'd slipped the rope around Rufus's wrists.

"No," Reno says, irritated after Tseng whispers in his ear, softer than Rufus can discern. "Tifa can just come sit on his ass, she stayed over last night, yo."

Tseng tilts his head before nodding. "If she's willing," he says. Rufus doesn't bother containing his bemused fascination at that statement, allowing his eyebrows to lift in surprise. Tseng is particularly protective of Rufus's carefully cultivated presentation, not just his person. However much he and Reno both may have come to trust Tifa (and therefore Rufus himself has, by extension)—this is something else entirely. Tseng would never think of or agree to Elena, or Alex or Miki, here.

"Yeah, odds are really terrible Tifa's willing to make sure someone doesn't fucking hurt themself with their own stupidity," Reno says, rolling his eyes as he pulls his own phone out. "Babe, something came up, Tseng and I gotta deal with it, but Rufus still needs to stay on his fucking ass and not be working, can you come babysit this dumbfuck for me? Oh, you are _the best_ , yo."

Tseng dresses quickly, re-arming himself fully; he's done by the time Tifa knocks on the door and is out the door as soon as she enters.

"He's not allowed out of that bed until after he sleeps at least six fucking hours, yo," Reno says. "Doesn't matter how the fuck you keep him there, long as he stays."

Tifa glances over to Rufus, a quick assessing glance, no visible reaction. "Should I even ask why you haven't just drugged him?" she asks.

"All the sleep drugs, he goes full fucking manic," Reno says while he shrugs back into his own shirt and jacket. "Rest of the sedatives might as well be candy, and materia sleep you might as well not bother. Endorphins usually work, eventually."

Dressed, Reno leans down and kisses her. "Thanks, babe."

Once Reno has left, Tifa comes over to the bed to inspect the knots around his wrists. They are tied with enough slack Rufus could get free, given enough time, but not readily or quickly. "The sedatives: acquired tolerance or just natural bad luck?" Tifa asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She's wearing no shirt, only a bra with delicate blue spirals and stretch lace on the tops of the cups. Ever since Reno had first adopted her as his own Rufus has observed she is no more modest in private than he, but it's still odd in combination with the knee-length skirt she is also wearing.

"Both. I slept worse in my early twenties; eventually sedatives stopped helping," Rufus says, dropping the bait, and waits to see what that gets him, if he can begin to see why Tseng trusts her this much.

Tifa looks at him for a very long time and when she speaks she doesn't respond directly to that. "If I ask you for your parole are you going to take me seriously about it, or are you going to lie through your teeth giving your parole and then make an attempt to escape? Because if it's the latter, we can skip it; I will beat you bloody and unconscious and the knots you wake up to will be a lot less comfortable than those are."

The question is as interesting as anything she might have said in direct response, and Rufus considers her for a long moment. Her tone is conversational, not threatening. The only weapons he has within reach of the bed are small blades; all of his guns are locked in the cabinet, and he has seen her spar with the others, so he can't say her assessment is unwarranted.

"Why do you want my parole?" he asks, answer enough in itself.

"Because there's a conversation I'd like to have with you, and I'm not going to have it with you while you're physically restrained," Tifa says, with a shrug. "If you don't want to give it, fine. It's not one we have to have."

Rufus could resist finding out what conversation she could possibly want to have that requires him to be unrestrained and therefore his parole; it is a curiousity, but not much of one by itself. However, he is desperately interested in understanding her now. Not just why Tseng would trust her, but also why she had been willing to come and stay. Reno had implied her drive to take care of those around her was sufficient reason, but few people of that inclination would take this situation in stride and, in fact, promise bodily harm to maintain it.

"[ _You have my parole_ ]," Rufus says and it isn't surprising as such that it comes out in Wutaian, given who taught him the concepts of honor and the value of your word, but he hadn't meant to switch languages. 

"[ _I accept_ ]," she responds in kind, and pushes herself up to standing. Her hands are soft and gentle against his wrists as she works the rope loose. He sits up and crosses his legs not for modesty but comfort.

"Are you interested in, and also willing to, have sex with me?" Tifa asks and Rufus blinks. He hadn't had any particular expectations, but it's not a direction he would have guessed if asked to make the attempt.

"Maybe," Rufus admits, with a twist in his gut feeding into his partial arousal. She is _fascinating_ him, the more so for that question; any model he had had of her has been smashed to pieces today. "And yes, but my willingness to have sex with attractive, athletic people is generally a given."

Tifa snorts. "Yes, there's a reason I asked both," she says.

Rufus turns that over in his head, what it implies: that she likely habitually makes the distinction between personal interest and physical drive as much as he does. "I really can't see why you refused to have this conversation with me restrained, though," Rufus says, after a moment, because it's bothering him.

Tifa gives him the same long look she had before asking for his parole. "I'm not _surprised_ it isn't obvious to you, but I don't proposition people who have been deprived of their bodily agency by other people _while they're still deprived of it_."

"But—if bodily agency is your concern, my parole is equivalent to the ropes in restraining me; I can't leave the bed either way," Rufus says, absolutely baffled by the reasoning she has given him.

Tifa pinches the bridge of her nose, forehead creased beneath her hand. "Yes, you would see it that way, why am I even surprised," she says, pained. "I don't think I can explain the difference between the two without a way to go unfuck your entire childhood first. Nevermind, your parole is something _I_ negotiated and that matters to me as much as the rest."

Rufus can _almost_ work his mind around that, at least: negotiating a half-completed business deal left by others to a satisfactory conclusion generally requires finding some intermediate position you personally negotiated before carrying on with the rest. It is surprising to him that she wouldn't object to negotiating with someone with as little room to deal as he had had, but the rationale is at least comprehensible and it's abundantly clear, now, her motivations run deeper than Rufus has taken the time to see. If not what draws Tseng or why Tseng trusts her…he sees now what has drawn _Reno_ in like a moth to flame, a ruthlessness she tempers and controls well enough Rufus hadn't guessed at it before now, and perhaps that careful tempering explains what drew Rude to her.

Tifa lets her hand spread across her cheekbones, just under her eyes, before dropping it. "Anyway, given the point of all this is for you to actually sleep, my proposition is we screw until either you pass out or they get back," she says. "It's going to be incredibly boring for us both, otherwise."

Perhaps she would be, but Rufus is unconvinced he could be bored by this woman at the moment. No reason to say no, though; it's been a long time since he's had the time and opportunity to have sex with a woman and given an otherwise neutral choice between having sex or not, he will always take the sex. "That sounds… more agreeable than the alternative, yes," he says.

"Mm. There we are, then." Tifa says, turning the rope in her hands over thoughtfully. "I do trust your parole, but I still want to tie you back up first, for efficiency's sake."

"I still don't really see a difference between the two," Rufus shrugs, but he feels another twist of desire coil in his gut at the tantalising hint at her mode of thought. "What efficiency?"

"You sleep for shit for a lot of reasons probably, but I'm guessing one of the biggest is that you're terrible at letting go of your control," Tifa says, bluntly. "Which would be why tying you up and fucking you until the endorphins shut down your sympathetic nervous system long enough for you to sleep is Reno and Tseng's solution when it gets this bad; you can't let go of your control, but you can let it be taken away from you."

Rufus stares taken aback at her depth of insight. Tifa smiles, her lips twisting viciously. " _I_ slept worse in my late teens, and drugs didn't work for me either. Only I didn't have anyone," she says tossing his bait back, finally, and Rufus flinches back.

Both from the reminding blow it was intended as, and the incredible precision of it. When he'd flipped that out there, distracted by the mystery she had presented him with, he hadn't been thinking of the fact that Tifa had been one of the first of Jenova's victims to suffer under her use of Sephiroth.

He can see, now, that what he had thought was an almost nauseating sweetness is the result of a bitterly accurate insight into those around her; that she only looks nice because she spends as much constant and unthinking effort turning her own jagged, angry edges away from those around her as Rufus spends monitoring every single aspect of his body language and speech. He wonders at the fact she deliberately let that effort slip long enough to land that perfectly balanced, mirrored blow, and in doing so gave away to Rufus as much as she has about herself since she walked in the room.

She pushes him onto his back, drags his arms over his head, and slides the ropes around one wrist, then the other. The wrap and knots Tifa uses aren't familiar to him, but when she's done they're at least as secure as Tseng's with less play. When she's satisfied with her work, she leans down to kiss him. It isn't violent, but it isn't gentle either, the pressure of her lips bruising against his as she takes his mouth.

She'd been careful to ensure his shoulders and arms were positioned comfortably but he won't be moving his wrists until she or someone else releases him and the terrifying thing isn't that his body is responding, his cock hardening as he pulls against the ropes, but that the rest of his brain isn't screaming about it.

Tifa has peeled his skin back, compromised him, and if she peeled her own back while she was doing so that doesn't change that she isn't _his_. Tseng's, Reno's, Rude's, yes; no threat, as a result. But she isn't _his_. The physical response is irrelevant, his body has patterns it will follow, but being seen this clearly, having had his shroud of mental armor stripped away by someone who is not beholden to him should be tripping every mental alarm and sentry he has. 

Rufus shivers, breathing hard when Tifa pulls away, and stares at her, willing her eyes to offer any explanation for what she's doing to him and _how_. "Why?" he asks, hoarsely. "Why are you doing this?"

"You've never had someone take care of you _just_ because they could, no other reason, no other agenda, have you?" Tifa says, almost meditatively. "Except Seph. But that got complicated, too. Tseng would have, I suspect, but when would you have ever had a chance to find out? Reno, as well. But you met them both through the company. Even if Seph gave you Tseng, there were always other reasons too. And then they were _yours_ , your people, and _that_ was a reason beyond their own desire."

Rufus feels as though she's taken butterfly pins to his skin that she's peeled off, pinning the flaps away so his inner thoughts can be seen by anyone who glances at him.

"I don't like you much, though sometimes I think I might have if we'd met sooner," she says. "But that doesn't really matter. Something I didn't really learn until I was a parent is that you don't have to _like_ someone to want to take care of them. I can't do any of the things I really want to. I can't tear your trashfire of a childhood down and build something better, make sure you grew up loved; I can't even go kill all the fucking sociopaths who did their best to to make you one too painfully slowly, they're all already dead. But this? I can do this."

Rufus can barely breathe, chest tight. No one he hasn't found a way to bind to him should be able to see him this clearly and still want anything to do with him, much less to take care of him. He does believe her, and maybe that's why his brain isn't screaming the way it by all rights should be, but he doesn't _understand_ her at all.

Tifa unties her skirt, a green batik wrap-around, dropping it on the floor, before removing her plain black panties with her thumbs. When she reaches a hand down, feather light, to wrap around his cock and stroke gently, Rufus shudders under her touch in full body shakes that cause his left shoulder to twinge warningly. "Mm, condoms," she mutters, and fishes one out of the pile on the table beside his bed.

She is very efficient in tearing it open and slicking it over Rufus's erection in a smooth, practiced motion. Tifa runs a thumb over his lips, and he remembers that bruising, relentless kiss of hers. She pulls her hand away from his mouth to guide his cock to the entrance of her cunt, and works herself down onto him with equally unyieldingly slow pressure.

Staring up at Tifa as she finishes taking him in, Rufus wonders why he had ever thought someone that could steal even a share of Reno, Rude, _and_ Tseng's attention could possibly be any less magnetic and compelling than himself.

As feather-light as her hand had been against his cock Tifa lays a hand against Rufus's throat, the base of her thumb nestled in the hollow of it and the tip of her thumb nestled under the base of his jaw. It's not a threat any more than her assertion when she'd arrived that she would beat him bloody and unconscious if he attempted escape had been but a reminder, if the ropes weren't enough, that she has him in her hands.

Rufus lets go of his tongue when she pulls away and drops against him heavily, her breasts moving with the weight and change of direction even in the bra she's still wearing. The warm, wet heat of her cunt sliding around him is sensation enough, but what sets him on fire and causes him to moan is that her touch at his throat doesn't shift or get heavier at all as she moves her hips. He shouldn't be surprised at Tifa's control of _her_ body, having seen her move and fight, but it hadn't been him at her mercy then.

Eventually she pulls her hand away from his throat, shuddering a little as she does. It's grimly satisfying to finally see her composure and control affected in _some_ way by him, Rufus thinks, even as she pushes two fingers into his mouth against his tongue before reaching for her clit.

There are a lot of reasons for a woman to fake an orgasm but he can't think of any that apply here, now, to this woman. But it is certainly the least involved Rufus himself has ever been in a woman's orgasm in his bed—Tifa having taken it from him entirely for herself.

Tifa's comes, it seems, with aftershocks; little jitters through her as she continues to ride him and Rufus finds him taken by surprise by his own orgasm, groaning.

"I've got you," she murmurs, clenched around him while he tenses under her, ropes biting into his wrists as he shudders through spilling the last of his semen.

Rufus isn't going to be sleeping after _that_ , he thinks, as she pulls off him and deals with the condom. Rufus admires her ass, absently, as she walks over to the mini-fridge and pulls out a couple of bottles of water. "It's a pity I don't have my harness with me," she says, after cracking open and downing half of one.

Rufus's breath catches at the thought of being fucked like that by Tifa, what she could do to him with a harness and a strap-on, and thinks _yes, please_ , desperately. She comes over and tips a small amount of water into his mouth from the open bottle; just enough to moisten his parched membranes, dry from open-mouthed straining. _Next time_ , he thinks as he swallows against the water, followed immediately by: _oh shit there_ is _going to be a next time_.

Not because he wants it, although he certainly does, but because even if Tifa has no interest in Rufus for herself, it's obvious she will intervene the next time his sleep patterns devolve severely enough to concern Tseng. Even if Rufus cannot fathom _why_ she cares.

Tifa runs a hand through his hair, gently tousling it. A small part of Rufus winces at the small, satisfied noise that escapes him as she rubs a few small circles just behind his ear, before running her hand down his neck and then his breastbone and down to his pubic hair. But only a small part; the rest of him is torn between purring at her touch and bewildered disbelief.

Tifa gives him a little more more water, and then kisses him again. It's still not gentle, but it's not _as_ bruising as her first kiss was. When she pulls away, Tifa leans in to mouth at the hollow of his jaw where her thumb had rested before she pulled away, and works her way down. Rufus's pulse thunders in his ears as she pauses over his adam's apple, her teeth light enough to leave no mark as she scrapes over his skin. 

She works her way down from there to the hollow of his collarbones, down his breastbone, _painfully_ slowly. By the time Tifa has even made it to his abs, his cock is registering some interest, stirring a little towards hardness. She keeps following her path, eventually pausing as she reaches the bush of his pubic hair to give him a thoughtful look.

Rufus isn't surprised when Tifa leans back in that she swallows the head of his cock; he's under no delusions that fellatio, or any other sexual act, is inherently submissive. His hips still buck a little under Tifa's firm hands, sensitive as he is right now.

Tifa pulls back enough to mouth the underside of his cock and then the sides and top, leaving saliva as she goes that cools; by the time she's covered his cock entirely he's fully erect and she swallows around his glans again. Just the head—Tifa's mouth is small enough that is presumably all she can take without involving her gag reflex. Tifa lifts her right hand off his hip from where she's been holding him down, and wraps it around the base of his cock to stroke him, her touch firm and sure.

She laves her tongue against his urethral opening, pushing into it as much as she can with her tongue, making him quake. Rufus stares up at the ceiling and marvel, again, at the fact he had dismissed Tifa as kind, sweet, and entirely irrelevant to him.

Her technique is extremely practiced, and Rufus wonders briefly _who_ she has practiced on. He _cannot_ be the only one who has mistaken her exterior for genuine innocence, and the weeks she has spent orbiting Rufus's people seem unlikely to be enough to explain her ease alone.

When he eventually comes again under her attentions, Tifa swallows around him until he is done and proceeds to climb up to kiss him again; not fiercely, but open-mouthed and wet. Rufus can taste traces of himself on her tongue.

Tifa breaks away finally, and Rufus tries and fails to find much else in the way of thought than _yes_ and _please_ and _more_. Tifa grabs the open half-full bottle of water and offers him a little more before she downs the rest. Rufus watches her throat swallowing around the water, entranced.

When Tifa is done she shakes her head, before sweeping her hair up off her neck and into a loose bun. "I don't know why I didn't just bring my bag when Reno called," she grumbles while she tucks stray strands behind her ears. "I should know better than to trust Reno's initial explanations."

Rufus shakes with laughter. It's reassuring to hear she isn't immune to Reno, either. "Reno's always been like that," he says, at her lifted eyebrows. "Tseng still gets taken off-guard sometimes, at what Reno thinks he needs to explain and what he doesn't."

Tifa laughs, one hand on her face. "At least it's not just me," Tifa says, wry, before she leans down to free him from the bedframe, leaving his wrists bound. "Sit," she says, cracking open the other bottle of water and handing it to him.

Rufus drinks his water slowly, enjoying the view as Tifa adjusts her bra straps and re-settles her breasts in the cups. When he's done, Tifa pulls his wrists behind him, re-securing him in this new position just as carefully with regards to his shoulders as she had before. "I wish I had more rope," she says wistfully. "You'd look beautiful in shibari."

Rufus swallows, closing his eyes. "Tseng would like that," he hears himself say, and shivers because he hadn't intended to say that aloud.

"Mm, yes, I bet he would," Tifa says thoughtfully. Rufus opens his eyes as she straddles him. Tifa cradles his head with both hands and kisses him; her hands dig into Rufus's hair, twisting, as she maps his mouth with her own.

"I always wondered why you wear so much hair product; I never realised it was so fine," Tifa says eventually, still idly toying with his hair. Rufus can't think of any response to that, not when her fingernails scrape across the base of his skull and she shifts against him, her belly warm and firm against his cock.

Tifa pulls another condom out of her bra and Rufus blinks, bemused, because he hadn't seen her putting it _in_ in the first place. He feels like time is pooling up in eddies and tumbles before dashing away again as Tifa deals with the condom and slides onto him again, setting a languorous pace. Rufus is pretty sure she has at least two orgasms, the second one with her face buried in his neck, her breath warm against his skin. Tifa starts moving again after that, but more slowly still and covering less distance with her hips, like she's reaching the end of her endurance too.

Rufus is panting, overwhelmed and exhausted, when he shakes apart with his own orgasm. Everything feels like molasses, his muscles, his mind; his eyes are slipping closed before she's even pulled away. By the time Tifa has cleaned up Rufus is already half-asleep. The last thing Rufus remembers is Tifa tucking a pillow under his head and then her hands on his wrists, gentle and sure.

Rufus surfaces to Reno's voice, and stays still as he starts taking stock of his various aches. His left shoulder is not especially happy and his wrists are stinging and the rest of him is sore, but it's better than he'd been expecting. "How long's he been out?" Reno is asking, soft.

Tifa's response comes from beside Rufus, where she is sitting. "Nine hours, give or take."

Rufus doesn't let his breathing change, but he's startled. He honestly has no idea when the last time he slept that long actually was. Before his father's death. It explains how stiff he is, though.

"Babe, you are _the best_ ," Reno says, clearly delighted; the weight on the bed shifts as Reno presumably leans in to kiss Tifa. "How?!"

"I went with your plan. We had a conversation, I tied him back up and we went three rounds of sex, after which he passed out," Tifa says, amused. "It's not that complicated, Reno."

"Uh, complicated, no. Just…. fast for knocking him out, yo," Reno says, understating it.

Tifa laughs, bright and silvery, and Rufus can hear the sharp shards lurking under there now. "Just ask me, next time. I'll bring my own rope."

Rufus lets himself start uncurling, stretching his vertebrae one by one, and refuses to dwell on the flash of warmth in his chest at Tifa's casual implied promise there; he had thought as much, it shouldn't matter to hear her say it herself.

Tifa is dressed again in her skirt, sitting cross-legged. She smiles, slightly, when Rufus finally sits up himself.

"Thank you," Rufus says, softly, and goes to take a shower. He doesn't trust himself to say anything else, right now, but he thinks Tifa might still pick up that his thanks are for more than simply helping him sleep; he doesn't much enjoy finding out he has been disastrously wrong but he would rather _know_ , and Tifa has forced him to finally take notice of how remarkable and unlikely she is. Even if he still has no idea _why_ she cares.

Fuck, Reno is going to be _unbearable_.

**Author's Note:**

> Alex and Miki are new hires among the Turks, if you were wondering who the fuck they are when Rufus mentions them; they're original characters who come up in the novel, not rando side characters from the other games in the Compilation I ran off with. So far as I know, anyway.
> 
> Look, the extended Compilation hurts my head, I have managed to repress most of everything I ever knew about it. Other than that Dirge of Cerberus was a really, _really_ terrible game.


End file.
